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 LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 189 tached to the stem. Sex is attributed to many things which do not really have it ; but gen- der, which is masculine, feminine, or neuter, is never assigned arbitrarily in defiance of the true sex, if of importance. Only singular and )lural numbers are distinguished. Distinctions )f case are in the singular five, the cases being named nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative ; but in some nouns and adjectives of the masculine gender a sixth form, not prop- erly a case in the opinion of many scholars, is found, called the vocative. In the plural there are only four: nominative, accusative, geni- tive, and a common form for the dative and ablative. Originally perhaps there was a dif- ferent form for each case in each number. The suffixes for the different cases are usually combined with the final vowel of the stem, so as not always to be readily distinguishable. Declensions are not always regular, and many old and exceptional forms of cases occur. Greek nouns in the pre- Augustan period gen- erally received slight changes, especially of vowels, to adjust them to the Latin usage. Adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions are indeclinable words; some of them are cases of existing, others of lost words ; others again are words with case suffixes different from those in common use in Latin ; and still others are mutilated remnants of fuller expressions. In verbs there are two voices, the active and the passive, the latter sometimes called re- flexive or middle. Some verbs have both voices, and some have only the active, except in the third person. Others, called deponents, have only the passive, but with the signification apparently of the active. In a few verbs no plural is found. There are three moods, indic- ative, subjunctive or conjunctive, and impera- tive ; six tenses in the indicative, viz. : three de- noting incomplete action, present, future, and imperfect (also called present imperfect, future imperfect, and past imperfect) ; and three de- noting completed action, perfect, pluperfect, and completed future (sometimes called pres- ent perfect, past perfect, and future perfect). In the subjunctive there are only four distinct tense forms, present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. Some verbs in the active and all in the passive have only three simple tense forms in the indicative, those of incom- plete action, and in the subjunctive only the present and imperfect. The passive voice sup- plies tense deficiencies by participles in com- bination with certain tenses of the verb ease, to be. Two indeclinable substantives, called infinitives, are usually treated in connection with the verb; also three verbal adjectives, called participles, the present and future, belonging to the active, and the past, to the passive voice; a verbal substantive and ad- jective, called the gerund and the gerundive, the former usually with the active, the lat- ter with the passive voice; and two supines, which are the accusative and ablative or da- tive of a verbal noun. Every single word in the Latin verb is a complete sentence ; the verbal stem being used, not by itself, but in combination with abbreviated forms of pro- nouns of the first, second, and third persons. The principles on which all verbs are inflected are the same. The differences in detail are due, some to the nature or ending of the stem of the particular verb, some to the unequal pres- ervation of parts of an originally fuller system of inflections. The forms of the present in- dicative singular active are the simplest, and arise from the union of the stem with personal pronouns. All other parts of the verb contain modifications for tense, mood, number, and voice ; those for tense and mood are made be- tween the stem and the personal pronoun, and the inflections for number and voice appended after them. Thus reg-er-e-m-us is the first person plural active imperfect subjunctive of a verbal stem meaning "rule." Reg is the stem, er denotes past time, e the mood, m the speaker, us the action of others with the speaker ; and if -us be changed into -ur, the speaker and others are passive instead of ac- tive. The study of Latin and its monuments, after the beginning of the Gothic age, or about A. D. 500, when it had ceased to be spoken by a distinct people, was at first greatly neglected. When the Germanic races settled in the Ro- mance countries, Latin was spoken only by the clergy and retreated to the convents, where also the remains of the libraries were carried. The monks, however, had little taste for ancient Latin literature; the manuscripts were not copied by them, and they even allowed them to perish, or to be injured by neglect. In the 6th century only Boethius and Cassiodorus still made a literary use of Latin, and only a few amateurs busied themselves with corrections and revisions of manuscripts, especially of Horace and Virgil. Several elementary text books of Latin grammar were compiled, but the most valuable literary effort of this period is Priscian's summary of Latin philology, which remained the chief authority of the middle ages, and even down to modern times. But men were not wanting, like Fulgentius Planciades, who in their ambition to be considered erudite in- vented high-sounding phrases, and gave them out as citations from ancient authors. The poetry of this age, by Arator, Venantius, and Corippus, and also the prose of Ennodius, has no other value than as it testified that taste, learning, and skill were rapidly declining. Happily the Benedictine order of monks, which began to flourish during this period, favored the copying of good books, and was thus a means of preserving the ancient authors. The dominion and wars of foreigners, and the settlement of Greeks and Lombards in Italy, and of Franks in Gaul, grew more and more disastrous to the Latin language and literature. Writing materials becoming scarce, ancient works were erased from parchments, which were then used for the purposes of the church. Ignorance of Latin literature gradually produced